Dat Sunburn!

The past few sessions have been very productive. I think everybody feels the end getting close and we’re kicking it into high gear on this last straightaway.

Got vocals down on “Better Bring A Bomb” & “Heard The Shot” a few nights ago. Went very smooth. A few nights later we got the final rhythm gtr’s and bass track down on a new one called “She’s More Of A Night Person”. Jeff put down the gtr’s. He had to learn the parts on the spot as I had only written the tune a few weeks prior and never even made a demo. He stepped up and nailed it in only a few takes. They sound amazing and I have to tell you that if it wasn’t for friends lending us a bunch of extra gear (Gtr’s, Amp’s etc) the album wouldn’t be sounding as good as it does. Of course it would still be good, but just having all the options is just awesome. With that said, if it wasn’t for the Metal Band that we rent a practice space too at the studio the gtr’s would have suffered big time. Any time our little arsenal of Fender amps wasn’t cutting it sound wise we could just go into their room witch resembles a mini-Guitar Center and take our pick of a ton of really cool Marshall, Orange, Laney or Sunn amps not to mention the endless supply of weird, old efx pedals. We’ve been leaning pretty heavy on this old Sunn head and cab for the last couple of tunes (Jeff used it on this last track). I think it’s solid state. Man that fucker get some sweet overdriven tones. Not really “distorted”, just good and dirty.

Brian also had to learn the tune on the spot and I have to say, he nailed one sweet ass bass track that had us all smiling in the control room as he laid it down. I guess knowing it was the last bass track one the album he decided to let it rip. Bass? DONE! It was one of those really fun nights of recording.

So I can’t believe I forgot to tell you this little studio happening. Sometime last week we were recording a bass track when in-between takes we heard somebody come in front door downstairs. I thought it was Jeff as the rest of the band was already there, but Dave heard a girls voice as they came up the stairs. Turns out it was the owner of our building Ernie along with a Asian female associate in tow. She heard the music outside an insisted on coming up and checking out what was going on. She burst through the door and with a very heavy accent asked “Are you getting high?”. We told her no, just beer and cigarette’s. This chick was shot of a cannon man. She told us that she “Sing in wedding band” and proceeded to point at all out gear and tell us what it was. “I know dat, dat Fender”, “What’s dat, dat bass?”. We were all pretty well oiled on Miller High Life at this point and we’re trying to answer her questions, but it was like she was a 5 year old that had just learned all of here favorite instruments names and was let loose in a petting zoo of musical instruments. The most classic line of her visit was when she saw the Fender Telecaster with a sunburst finish hanging on the wall and declared two times in a row in a very excited tone “I know dat, dat sunburn!”. I almost lost my shit. So good. Of course the video camera was not rolling. Fuck! A lesson learned: Always roll tape……..always!

-j


The black Strat is my main gtr and is all over this album. The other two are on loan from Dave's brother Mike.


Jeff behind the mic.


No more bass for you.


The vocal "booth".


The mighty Mica Fuzz Wau Wau! One of the many pedals we stole from the Metal Band. This thing is insane.

Great Ghost Stories

This is the album that had "The Golden Arm" ghost story i was talking about 2 posts below!

Click here to hear it! I haven't heard this in over 26 years at least. Awesome....

Thanks A.J.!

A Visit From An Old Friend

So my old Lenola band mate and long time musician buddy Sean Byrne came by the studio tonight to hang out for the evening. I’ve spent the better part of 12 or more years making music with Sean. He’s been with me (playing drums) for all the post Turning Point music projects I’ve worked on up until Like A Fox. My man stood by me though thick and thin (mostly thin) for a long time. He’s since went on to release some amazing music with his own band “The Twin Atlas”. He’s the acceptation to the rule that a drummer shouldn’t write songs and stick to just playing the drums. I started out playing the drums and I’d still say I’m a better drummer than I am a guitar player/songwriter so I have to agree that that “rule” is bullshit. Regardless, it was a pleasure to have Sean in the studio. I knew straight off I wasn’t gonna have him in the studio to just hang out and drink with us while we went on with our business. He had to do some tracking, but I just wasn’t sure what or where to have him do his thing. One of the new tracks we just started tracking “Better Bring A Bomb” was pretty wide open, just an acoustic track with drums and bass. No vocals, no keys. Plenty of holes to fill. After I laid down a couple of electric gts to fill out the rhythm tracks and a simple “lead” gtr I handed Sean the gtr and an empty High Life bottle to lay down some slide gtr. 20 minutes later he had killed a two part slide harmony gtr deal. So good! He than went on to do some amazing percussion tracks that just took the song to the that “next level”. As I’ve said before, it’s the “headphone” tracks that make a song and Sean laid down some serious “headphone” shit tonight.

I’ve always been lucky to be involved in The Twin Atlas in one way or another. I’ve played guitar and bass with them in the live setting and have laid down a few tracks on their albums. It was nice to return the favor and have him along for the ride once again. Good times for sure!!


A sweet painting of The Twin Atlas live by Sean's pop Pete....Nice!

What’s In A Name?

So…as we get closer to finishing the album I’ve reached the point of having to name this fucker. The first LAF album was self titled. The first time I’ve ever coped out and didn’t give an album a proper title. Looking back on it, it was pretty lame as the only bands that should be allowed to “self title” an album are the big guns: Led Zeppelin, KISS, David Bowie, Cheap Trick…..you get the idea. In the Lenola days I would have the album title before the first note of music was ever committed to tape. I liked it that way. It felt like you were working on “something”……it had a name, an identity. But all of those album titles were either inside jokes that sounded cool or actual quotes from a drunken conversations I had that just struck me in the moment and made me think “that would make a great album title”. Well, I had one of those moments a few months back and I though I had the title for this record. I was at a BBQ at my buddy Brian’s house sitting in his backyard with a hand full of friends from my hometown, just talking about the old days, childhood shit when I remembered this old ghost story album that was passed around amongst all of us way back as youngin’s. Side two had this one ghost story about a lady that somehow ended up with an actual golden arm (a farming accident? I can’t remember), anyway the lady with the golden arm passed, but she made it clear she wanted to be buried with the golden arm before hand. The long and short of the story is that some guy dug her up and stole the golden arm and hid it under his bed. The first night he started to hear some faint moans and creepy sounds as he laid in bed until a few nights later when he was awoke to find the corpse of the golden arm lady standing at the foot of his bed screaming “where’s my golden arm, you have my golden arm!” over and over again in the most insane scary voice along with a ton of the most creepy sound effects ever. I used to play this record on my little record player night after night just to scare the shit out of myself every time listened to it. I loved that story and had totally forgotten about it until it came up over beers with my old friends and it hit me….that’s the title “The Golden Arm!”

A cool title that reminds me of old friends and good times……

Here is where this whole “Golden Arm” title gets weird.
My older brother Chris has been the artist behind all the cover art for every album, 7 inch & ep I’ve ever released dating back to the late ‘80s. With every project I start his first question is “what the title?” so he can get some grasp on the artwork. A few months ago he asked the same question and I replied “The Golden Arm” and explained the story behind it. He’s few years older and didn’t quite remember the ghost story album, but then informed me that there is and old movie starring Frank Sinatra about a jazz musician that was addicted to heroin called “The Man With The Golden Arm”. I had never heard of the movie.

Now here’s where things get a bit heavy and where I decided I can’t use the name. I’ve lost a few of my oldest/best friends to that fucking drug.

To be honest a few of the songs on this album were written around the feeling of losing some of my best friends to such a terrible drug, so the title I originally chose does have a double meaning: good memories vs. the ultimate evil.

I still like the title “The Golden Arm”, but it’s just the fact that that title would instantly conjure up the thoughts of addiction to some folks that don’t know me or the back story of the of that ghost story and the friends that I have lost.

Back to the drawing board….

-j


Enjoy another short "lo-fi" vid of LAF in the studio.

12.5.07 (Bass is the place)

(Bri......laying it down!)

Yeah man…we’re close. Brian laid down bass on two of the last three tracks we have to complete. The last couple of tracks have been written on the fly….I think I already explained the whole “I dig writing the last songs of an album on the fly” thing a few posts ago so read below to catch up on that, but what that means for Pete’s drum parts or Brian’s bass parts is that they end up playing to really raw, basic acoustic tracks with me talking them through the part. Tonight Brian had the pleasure of playing bass on two new tracks that he really had no idea what he was gonna play. It’s a quick fix though. Just grab the acoustic gtr and run though the deal a few times with him and we’re off. The first tune we tracked is called “Heard The Shot”. A pretty simple “pop” type tune and the bass went down in a couple of takes. The second tune we tracked “You Better Bring A Bomb” was a bit more of a challenge but gave him a little room to stretch out on the bass and that turned out to be a good thing. He nailed a solid bass track and added a sweet counter melody bass line for the “middle eight” of the tune that changed my whole idea of what that part was gonna be……Very nice!

-j

Well on our way….to the last weeks of recording!

Hit the studio at 7:00 this evening. Started with some drum tracks. Some of the last drums we need to record. It’s always a good sign of being close to the end when the last drums are put to tape…well “digital tape” anyway.

Pete put down a cool loop type beat in the verse parts of a tune called “I Don’t Know”.

And, yes that is a working title, it is a lyric in the song, but a very bad song name. “What song do you want to work on? “I don’t know”. Have a smoke, think about it. “I don’t know! Man”. It can be like the “Who’s on first” bit. Well, not really. I’m just realizing that I’m horrible at giving my songs an actual decent name. As we track each song in the studio I have to come up with a “song title” on the spot so we know what we’re working on and know how to find it on the computer tomorrow. I usually pick the first lyric of the tune…..not always bad, not always good. What I’m getting at is that a song now referred to as “I Don’t Know” is a pretty sweet tune and will end up with a much better/representative title like “Diamond Laced Fingers Stealing The Golden Horn Of The Ultimate Awesome Unicorn!” Ummmm, no. Gotta find something in between the two I guess. Most of the working titles of the tunes kinda suck, bit that’s an easy fix.

The second part of the night was spent putting some less conventional drum tracks one of the latest and final tunes we started tracking last week. This one is gonna be one of the only truly acoustic based “mellow” tunes that will appear on the album. Set up a floor tom for Pete to play and a rack tom that I played at the same time. I was looking for a “marching band” type effect. It worked. Then we laid down some stereo tracks of a snare and a crash cymbal to complete the effect. All this took up a good bit of the night and even though they are intended to basically be “headphone” tracks that most people will not really notice in the final product we still gave it our all and drank a few Miller’s in the process.

I’m now at the point that I need to come up with an album title too. I had one that I really thought was pretty great and was committed too, but I feel like a have to change now. I didn’t know the title I chose had a “double” meaning until a couple months ago. I’ll write about it tomorrow.

As always thanks for reading!

-j

Catching up Pt.2

The home studio.

So the past three weeks have been slow at the “real” studio, and the other guys have had plenty of free time as all the work we had put in the many weeks prior had been loaded up on an external hard drive and dumped into my home set up for me to add all the keyboards, noises, beeps and other random headphone type deals. It’s a little ass backwards that I spend so much time on shit that most people will not even notice on the final recording, but I just really love when bands pay attention the small details, the type of shit that creeps up on you only after a couple of listens via a good set of headphones. I listen to music all the time, but I never really consider it a “good listen” unless its turned up through a good stereo with a few adult beverages or cranked up on a nice set of headphones along with a couple puffs of grass. Any band you consider worth a shit should get your full attention and should be treated the same as watching a movie. Cut out all outside distractions and just enjoy the ride. I’m not saying you shouldn’t jam out to your favorite band while you dust the house or mop the kitchen floor, but just do yourself a favor and spent the time to really listen from time to time. I’m thinking this is becoming a lost art…..people actually “listening” to an album for the sheer enjoyment of the listening experience. Tis a shame, but if you take my advise you’ll be happy you did. It’s a lost art in the “digital” age. I love my ipod too. Shuffle rules, but you gotta get back to basics and just sit and listen to a full album now and again.

Sorry for the rant, but I’ll bring the whole thing back to my own “self promoting” ways that this whole blog is based on yeah?

I spent the last three weeks adding “sounds” to the first twelve tunes we completed at our studio and brought back to my home studio. The first week was easy. I just plugged in the parts that were already written via my early demos. Then the next two weeks were spent playing, deleting and re-recording tracks for hours on end every night to the point that I could even tell if what I was doing was good, bad, awful or awesome. At the end of every night the beers and weed told me all I tracked was gold, but the sober morning listen would usually tell me otherwise. After a few nights of suck I got on a roll and knocked out all the tunes and have now been cleaning them up at our proper studio.

Another weird/fun part of every album I’ve recorded dating back to all the albums I recorded with my old band Lenola is that I’ve always started every album with a solid eight or nine songs knowing I had to write a few more tunes to complete a full album. I like the pressure of having to write some good shit quick to complete the project. This album is no different. I’ve spent the past three nights with gtr in hand and finalizing lyrics for the “late comers” of the album. They usually end up being some of the best tunes of any record I make.

We were actually in the studio tonight putting vocals on one of these “late comers” called “Internal, External” and I must say it was an amazingly productive night and I tracked some of the best vocals on the album so far. Good times…..

Cheers!

-j

Since We've Been Gone

Man-o-man. Yes, as Pete said “it’s been a long time” since the last update. You could blame this on being lazy, but I’m gonna blame it on being busy making music. A lame excuse for sure, but it makes me feel better. The last we left off there was tons of whining and complaining about “shit not working” and “can’t wait to start getting shit done”. Well as we said well over a month ago, the shit works and that’s exactly what we’ve been doing. Working, and I must say it’s been awesome. So awesome that I forgot that we even had this blog deal going.

So lets catch up shall we?

My goal for this record was to have 16 tunes to pick from before all was said and done. We’re gonna come up one short, but will still have to cut four or five songs for the album proper. Not to bad. We’re at the point where we can see the end of the road, but it’s a long flat road and the light at the end of the tunnel might be a bit further away then it appears, but if we keep the proverbial “nose to the grind stone” we should be able to wrap this fucker up in the next month.

The breakdown:

We have 13 of the 15 tunes just about wrapped up. Still need to tidy up a few details here and there. Wash’em behind the ears, change a few diapers, get the necessary shots and so on, but they are healthy and sounding better than I ever expected.
In the past 2 weeks we’ve laid down the basic tracks for the last three tracks. They are in the early stages, but the x-rays look good and we’re happy to tell you that they might end up being some of the strongest of our tribe.

It’s only natural that some survive and some must pass. We have a strong herd of songs my friends and the tunes that make it to the album will have proven their wealth through weeks of trial an error, leg wrestling and drinking games. I can’t wait for the final episode….

We’re back! More to come soon…….Posts…Pics….Vids…..

Thanks for reading!
-j

WOW!!!

it's been along time since the last post. we've been really busy or not so busy because we are almost done. well close to being done for the most part. we finished a lot of the tracking at the studio and moved all the tracks over to jays house so he can put the keys and all the little clicks and beeps down. so really we've all been bored. as you can see in this video.
after the video jay did finish the keyboard stuff and we've been putting the finishing touches on about 12 songs. we also did drum tracks for two new songs. i think we've got one more song to track which will more of an acoustic jam. we should be back in the swing of things starting this week and hopefully we will keep this updated a little more...

yes, it's really working...

well things are finally coming together. we've done multiple days of recording and no pops or crackle or any other weird noises, other then the ones we've created. actually we've been so busy we don't even have time to post.

well our new found love of the studio has brought on some good days and nights. now that everything is up and running we will get the video camera up and hopefully have some good clips. tomorrow we will start some new drum tracks and we should be on our way...

here is a video of jay playing guitar for a song called "vertical dance"...

enjoy...